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Imaging global brain connectivity can predict how intelligent you are

'Global brain connectivity' with a part of the left lateral prefrontal cortex explains 10 percent of variance in individual intelligence

August 2, 2012

New research suggests as much as 10 percent of individual variances in human intelligence can be predicted based on the strength of neural connections between the lateral prefrontal cortex and other regions of the brain (credit: WUSTL/Michael Cole)

What factors distinguish the brains of exceptionally smart humans from those of average humans?

More recent research has pinpointed the brain’s lateral prefrontal cortex, a region just behind the temple, as a critical hub for high-level mental processing, with activity levels there predicting another 5 percent of variation in individual intelligence.

“Our research shows that connectivity with a particular part of the prefrontal cortex can predict how intelligent someone is,” suggests lead author Michael W. Cole, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in cognitive neuroscience at Washington University.

The study is the first to provide compelling evidence that neural connections between the lateral prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain make a unique and powerful contribution to the cognitive processing underlying human intelligence, says Cole, whose research focuses on discovering the cognitive and neural mechanisms that make human behavior uniquely flexible and intelligent.

“This study suggests that part of what it means to be intelligent is having a lateral prefrontal cortex that does its job well; and part of what that means is that it can effectively communicate with the rest of the brain,” says study co-author Todd Braver, PhD, professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and of neuroscience and radiology in the School of Medicine. Braver is a co-director of the Cognitive Control and Psychopathology Lab at Washington University, in which the research was conducted.

Global hub of the brain

Prefrontal cortex (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

One possible explanation of the findings, the research team suggests, is that the lateral prefrontal region is a “flexible hub” that uses its extensive brain-wide connectivity to monitor and influence other brain regions in a goal-directed manner.

“There is evidence that the lateral prefrontal cortex is the brain region that ‘remembers’ (maintains) the goals and instructions that help you keep doing what is needed when you’re working on a task,” Cole says.

“So it makes sense that having this region communicating effectively with other regions (the ‘perceivers’ and ‘doers’ of the brain) would help you to accomplish tasks intelligently.”

While other regions of the brain make their own special contribution to cognitive processing, it is the lateral prefrontal cortex that helps coordinate these processes and maintain focus on the task at hand, in much the same way that the conductor of a symphony monitors and tweaks the real-time performance of an orchestra.

“We’re suggesting that the lateral prefrontal cortex functions like a feedback control system that is used often in engineering, that it helps implement cognitive control (which supports fluid intelligence), and that it doesn’t do this alone,” Cole says.

fMRI studies

The findings are based on an analysis of functional magnetic resonance brain images captured as study participants rested passively and also when they were engaged in a series of mentally challenging tasks associated with fluid intelligence, such as indicating whether a currently displayed image was the same as one displayed three images ago.

Previous findings relating lateral prefrontal cortex activity to challenging task performance were supported. Connectivity was then assessed while participants rested, and their performance on additional tests of fluid intelligence and cognitive control collected outside the brain scanner was associated with the estimated connectivity.

Results indicate that levels of global brain connectivity with a part of the left lateral prefrontal cortex serve as a strong predictor of both fluid intelligence and cognitive control abilities.

Although much remains to be learned about how these neural connections contribute to fluid intelligence, new models of brain function suggested by this research could have important implications for the future understanding — and perhaps augmentation — of human intelligence.

The findings also may offer new avenues for understanding how breakdowns in global brain connectivity contribute to the profound cognitive control deficits seen in schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, Cole suggests.

Funding from the National Institute of Mental Health supported the study (National Institutes of Health grants MH66088, NR012081, MH66078, MH66078-06A1W1, and 1K99MH096801).

Comments (11)

In other words……white matter is just as important as grey matter. It was already known but there werent enough studies to show it on paper. I hope more studies like these are done to understand even more connections between regions.

Intelligence is THEE field. if it’s defined as general problem solving ability, then someone who can get help for a problem satisfies this, although his brain itself may not be good at calculations. Human intelligence per brain seems built for cooperation, which guves peer review otherwise so-called intelligent discoveries would be delusions.
Any network spread will have to use peer review nodes IMO.
The brain is less important than an artificial system’s ability to probelm solve, and these will surely cooperate for higher general intelligence.

Fat Heads rejoice…. I Thought the size of the brain/head to be important was interesting…. wondering if anyone is tracking long term specifics of head size (brain size) over generations… We seem to be getting a bit taller over time, so maybe just more protein in the diet…. we are obviously getting rounder/fatter in the middle (thanks processed foods and sitting behind a computer 14 hours/day). I wonder if the trend to see more ADHD and more Autistic or highly functioning autistic people has anything to do with spending so much time behind computers/dvds/etc as a species…Or if more related to pill companies looking to get more dr’s to diagnose these diseases, or they just know how to spot it faster/better?….or if we are evolving to be better at visual multitasking, etc? There is some research to say that those with fat heads also have decreased risk of Alzheimer’s and other cognitive decline, so wondering how that must also play into this.

My father suffers from dementia, caused by tiny blood vessels bursting, like micro strokes. Images of his brain look like it’s hit with buck shot. This causes him to lose certain abilities, in subtle ways. Think of this in relation to the “self” awareness article, makes me wonder. Has there ever been a case where there has been brain damage to those self awareness centers and the person could think and talk, but had no awareness of self. My guess would be no. If there was. It would be a famous case, to have no sense of self and yet function normally. Even those cases where most of the brain is fluid, they still have a sense of self.

I really have to thank you Edem. That link made my day. It gives validity to what I say. She only got a taste of it. Kind of like those free samples at the mall. For a brief time she could no longer sense her cage. I often think of it like this, we live in a box ( our bodies), over there we live in the box to, plus outside, plus we are the box. I use the metaphor of a holodeck. She could see the holodeck itself. The mechanism that creates this reality. If ever there was a video to put up in the three recent video slot at the top of the home page, this is it. It addresses all my reservations of mind uploading. What do you think Amara, oh editor in the either, hidden bringer of knowledge. Did you view it? Steven Hawkings should see it. He wouldn’t be so pessimistic. If she had gotten a little further out of her body, she would have felt gods presence, it’s irresistible pull. She talks about how she’s connected to the atoms. That’s what my email to Ray was about. I can see and feel it to. If you can make a machine to hold your soul, it intrinsically would have one already. Hopefully this website will play that TED clip. She is a highly trained nueroanatomist and she wants to spread her message just like I want to spread mine. Part of my message is that this knowledge is coming soon. We will come to understand what we are.

You’re very welcome Bri. I thought that you would enjoy it, and I agree that everyone should see it. It is a powerful and moving speech, hearing a brain scientist explain her personal experience with the infinite and spiritual nature of her being and yet doing so in an informed, technical and scientific context. I am not a religious person but I find this speech beautiful, insightful and deeply moving each time I see it.

have your father take Rutin to protect the tiny bloodvessels. Also antioxidants that pass through the blood brain barrier will protect his brain tissue..the blood brain barrier weakens as we age…thereby allowing more toxic material into the brain.